As predicted, 2007 has been a relatively busy year for us, so far. We're hoping that this will continue, and we're happy to announce that we've lined up a show at our favourite venue, The Roxy in downtown Vancouver. It's been a while since we've played there, so in order to mark our "triumphant return" we'd like to make this as big of a show as possible!
The show is on Wednesday, May 23rd, and we'll be taking the stage before 9:00pm (so it won't be a late night). Tickets are $5.00 and include a free drink. You can pick them up directly from Geoff, Matt, or Ayren, or better yet, you can now order them online through PayPal (we'll mail them to you for free if you do).
See you there!
Aside from the release of the Video Army EP, 2006 ended up being a pretty quiet year for us. However, we're confident that 2007 will be a little more interesting, if only because the three of us will soon be able to clear a lot of other stuff off of our schedules in order to focus more on the band. That's not to say we haven't been making progress in a number of areas, though. Here's an idea of some of the things that have been happening:
Welcome to the new-look Modern Republic website! We're in the process of transitioning the entire site over to this new design, but it'll probably be a little while before it's completely converted.
The really big news, however, is that our debut album "Video Army" is now available for sale online! Check out the Shop section to place a secured order through PayPal. All CDs will be shipped in protective bubble-wrap envelopes a day or two after an order is received, and we'll throw in a bunch of our fancy new business cards, too.
It's been months since our last update, and almost a year since we started the CD. We'd like to say that there have been plenty of good reasons for the delays but, well, unfortunately that just wouldn't be true.
HOWEVER... The CD is now complete, and has been sent off to the printers! Here's a picture of the cover.
Just a quick post today to welcome in the new year and wish everyone the best in 2006. We're pretty sure it's going to be a good year for us, and we hope it will be for you, too!
The CD is coming, but (surprise, surprise!) it's run into a few snags along its way towards completion. On the bright side, it is very close to being done, and it should be released this month. We'd like to offer a quick public 'thanks!' to Ryan Larocque of Rotisserie Design Works for giving us a bit of help with the album artwork.
Finally, another quick round of thanks for everyone who came out to our show on Wednesday at The Marine Club, as well as to Kevan Mitchell of Garage Entertainment for putting the show together and inviting us to play. I think we'd all agree that The Marine Club isn't the most 'happening' place, but it was a fun show nonetheless.
Here's to a great 2006!
As many of you probably know by now, Modern Republic walked away from The Buffalo Club on Tuesday as the overall winners of Fan Wars #10!
We played a short but tight set and felt that, regardless of whether we were going to win or not, it had been a good show and we had played very well. Of course, as mentioned in the previous post, the competition wasn't exactly about artistic merit, so we need to thank our fans, above all, for coming out to support us. It was definitely you fans who won the competition for us. Special thanks have to go out to Dan Wardrope and his wife Jeanette for coming to our show, and for our good buddy Jim stepping up and supporting us with a $100 bar tab! Also, thanks to Sarah Speakman for taking a bunch of pictures, which we'll get published online within a week or so. Finally, thanks to Whitney-John Stuart -- producer/organizer of Fan Wars -- for bringing us on board and for being a gracious host and all-around nice guy.
Anyway, the Fan Wars win has brought us a helpful bit of cash that we'll probably put towards printing of the Video Army EP, and more importantly, it's brought us a shot at a Friday or Saturday night gig in February, which may turn into our CD release party (don't worry, the CD will, however, be released well before then).
Well, looks like we're playing again, this upcoming Tuesday! We made it through to the finals of the Buffalo Club's tenth "Fan Wars" competition, which means we're competing against three other bands to take home the pot of all of the door-money that's been collected over the run of the competition. There's actually quite a bit at stake for the winner, so it'd be awesome if we could get a bunch of you out to support us!
Here's the deal, though. Unfortunately, this Fan Wars thing is far from an 'artistically-oriented' battle of the bands. There are no judges, and there are no ballots or anything for people to fill out and pick their favourite band. What happens instead is that the bands receive points for bringing people in the door (one point for each person coming in through the door and declaring their support for one of the competing bands), and they also receive points via drinks bought at the bar (when you buy a drink, you tell the bartender which band you're supporting). Of course, this whole thing is sponsored by Sleeman's, so if you buy a Sleeman's beer, the band you're supporting gets two points.
So, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on which way you look at it, the competition will be won by whichever band brings more people, and by how much those people drink (mind you, Sleeman's goes for $3.75 a bottle on Fan Wars nights, which is a pretty good deal!). Having said that, we'd certainly appreciate it if you could come out -- bring some friends, too -- and buy a whole lot of beer. It's sure to be a fun night!
Tomorrow evening is our first show in quite a while (see the 'Shows' section for details). It's a "battle-of-the-bands" sort of thing, so we'd love if you could come out and support us!
Word on the street is that a new song will be unveiled, too...
Yes, it has been way too long since there's been a new update here. A wide variety of things have been keeping us all really busy -- some relating to the band, but many others, unfortunately, not.
However, most of that is over and done with now, so we're starting to put some new energy back into things band-related. The biggest step towards that, of course, will be the release of our much-delayed demo CD. We're excited to let you know that the CD -- titled Video Army -- is currently being mastered by a good friend of ours named Ronn Perpich. Once that's done, it's just a matter of getting it into duplication, and barring any unforeseen complications, it should be ready to go before December (just in time for your Christmas shopping!).
Here's the track list:
Thanks for your patience everyone. We're confident that this sort of 'hiatus' won't be happening again anytime in the near future, and we look forward to seeing you at our upcoming shows in 2006 (or possibly sooner...).
There's still lots of mixing left to do, but the recording of the CD is complete, and it sounds fantastic.
Yeah, I know we said we were going to lay low until our CD was done. A fun opportunity just recently popped up, though, so we went after it.
We're playing up at SFU on Saturday, June 4th, as part of the 'grand opening' of the first phase of the new UniverCity community. An outdoor show in a cool setting on Burnaby Mountain with a very large audience should make for a really great show! Check out the Shows section for details.
(And for those of you who are familiar with him, Mark Berube will be performing as well; at 2:00 I believe.)
A brief update for everyone out there: we're laying low at the moment, and focusing on preparing for our upcoming recording sessions next month. We've got a couple of new songs that we expect to make a debut on the album, and I can tell they're definitely very cool. If there's one thing we're worried about when it comes to this recording, it's the fact that we have so many ideas and things we'd like to try for our songs that it'll be hard to keep ourselves in check!
No matter; it'll get done, and it'll be awesome. Expect the album to be released in early August.
The Thomas Haney fundraising concert is still on track for this Thursday (May 5th). I'm not sure of many of the details (cost of admission, time we're playing, etc.) but I intend to get that all figured out in a day or so.
In other news, planning for our upcoming album recording session is going very well. I think you'll all be very impressed with a new song or two that'll make their debuts on the CD. It's going to be awesome!
Big news today: we're finally all set to record our debut CD! We'll be heading into Dan Wardrope's Autumn Music studio in Maple Ridge on June the 17th, and hopefully within a month or so afterwards, we'll have six or seven songs recorded.
The CD won't be the only thing we'll be working on during that time, either. We'll be arranging some sort of 'CD-release party', and we'll be putting together a Modern Republic press-package and a new website. We're pretty excited about all of this -- these are going to be some very big steps forward for us!
In other news, we'll likely be playing a short gig at a fundraising event at Maple Ridge's Thomas Haney Secondary School on Thursday, May 5th. More details should follow soon.
Big show tonight... hope you can all make it!
And a really quick note: we'll have news about our upcoming album recording session within the next week.
The fine people managing The Roxy downtown have seen fit to book us for another show! More details are still forthcoming, but the show will be on Wednesday, March 30th at around 8:00. As was the case for our January show, tickets will likely be free, and include a free drink.
Hope to see you there!
Here's a couple of quick news-bites to keep all you wonderful people informed on what's been happening the last couple weeks.
First, the majority of our practices lately have been focusing on new material. We've got one very cool new song almost entirely completed (it's a jazzy, showtune-ish number that lays low until each chorus, when it steps up and rocks). It'll likely be a while before the other new songs are finished, but even from where they are right now they're sounding pretty darn cool.
Second, our plans for recording a full-length album (well, a full-length EP with six or seven songs) are being put into motion. We're meeting with Dan Wardrope at Autumn Music next week to discuss the possability of recording there again. More news on that later.
Finally, the website is about due for a major stylistic overhaul. I've got some ideas, and hopefully I'll put them together within the next month.
Check out the Music section for some newly-posted live tracks from our recent show at The Roxy. The sound quality on these things is pretty incredible. Thanks again to Cliff for recording them for us!
It's been a while since the last post, so here's a quick run-down of what's happening with us:
We're still going strong, practicing twice per week lately, as opposed to just once. We've been kicking around new song ideas, one of which has basically become a completed song (in a kind've jazzy, show-tune style), and a couple others which are quite promising.
As for upcoming shows, we're going to make a strong effort over the next couple weeks to try to arrange something. Two places that seem quite possible at the moment are the new-ish Buffalo Club, and The Lamplighter in Gastown.
Finally, we've also been talking about putting up some cash and recording a full-length CD sometime late in the Spring. It would be really nice to have something like that finished for the Summer so we could promote it at shows and such. We're also planning on taking a trip down to Seattle in the Summer and playing two or three shows there.
So all in all, we've got big plans and big ideas, and now it's just a matter of us working hard at putting them into motion!
Oh, and if you haven't seen them already, pictures from our Roxy show are up on the Captains of the World website.
The SFU show on the 28th has been cancelled. For the reasons outlined in Friday's post below, we weren't able to work out any sort of deal or reduction of the $500 security fee. However, we've been told that if we were to play on a Wednesday we wouldn't have to pay as much, so we're going to look into doing that instead.
